LOVESalem: Living Our Values Environmentally in Salem.~~~
Oregon-izing to Put People Before Cars ~~~
Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay.

Saturday, January 11, 2014

A transit-booster's thoughts on watching a transit "strategic planning" workshop

Random thoughts Live from the Cherriots board's strategic planning workshop:

All over America, including in Oregon, the techno-green folks and the sprawl lobby who find buses just too tasteless are combining to salivate over the ideas of techno fixes to respon to peak oil and climate destabilization, like electric, plug-In cars and driverless cars.

Both of which are the most costly possible solutions to the least important problem in the US, a question that just happens to dominate the thinking in official Salem: "How can we continue to have an absurdly costly, auto-dominated, single occupant vehicle friendly system?"

If we actually wanted to serve communities like Salem better, what we would be investigating and investing in would be driverless buses. Buses travel fixed routes, so programming is a snap. Robot vehicles that navigate fixed routes (but have flexibility to respond to disruptions using heuristic logic) are already in use worldwide, not just as aerial drones, but as work vehicles in countless environments, such as mines, giant manufacturing facilities, etc.

With remote surveillance cameras and microphones, we could actually have higher security buses (the driver is a very poor supervisor, and is also vulnerable to anything that threatens passengers) at lower costs, and we wouldn't be trying to create vehicles that can go to an infinite number of places.

Given the fiscal constraints crippling transit in Salem, we should start by creating a weekend hybrid rideshare coordination system plus driverless bus system for simplified routes (up and down Lancaster for example) and then extend both to seven days a week.

Jus' saying.

Final: The transit district is apparently going to repeat this exercise with "community influencers" and "stakeholders" on January 30 at 4 p.m. There was no mention of any process for asking to participate, so it has the potential to create an echo-chamber effect, with the carefully selected participants, chosen by the district itself, likely to wind up being those who will simply do as they are told and not provide any divergent or lateral thinking to expand the discussion. This is not a good procedure, even if the product is to your liking -- it's the same process that produced the Bridgasaurus Boondogglus proposals that have wasted so much money and energy in Salem; the Sprawl Lobby hand picked the citizen's committee to ensure that "no build" options would be marginalized from the start. Nothing Cherriots does could be as destructive or wasteful as the 3rd Bridge Boondoggle, but it's not a great sign that "ask the key insiders" is considered part of public process.

Update 4: "The schools and social service agencies like Kroc dump their problems on the transit district when they locate on cheap land, which is inaccessible land, and expect you to serve them; when they locate out on cheap land that is hard to serve they are saying that they want a reduced transit system."

Update 3: Rather than re-build a $78 million city/police/library downtown, let's bring Chemeketa, the library, and Kroc to the old Boise site, put the police in a strengthened existing library, and create branch libraries/police precincts/community centers north and south using existing commercial underused commercial lots and buildings.

Update: "When land is cheap it's because it's inaccessible." (Arising from discussion of Kroc Center.)

Update 2: the whole issue is being presented to the Cherriots board as a single continuum with overall system ridership at one end vs. coverage (a route within some reasonable walking distance for any random person). In other words, the discussion is "given that we think of ourselves solely as a bus system, which do you want, productivity (total boardings) or coverage (everyone feeling like they could take the bus, even if they don't.). No discussion yet of ways to change the game ... No Kobayashi Maru solutions broached yet.

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WORD

Communities exist for the health and enjoyment of those who live in them,

not for the convenience of those who drive through them, fly over them, or exploit their real estate for profit.

-- Ted Roszak, "Where the Wasteland Ends"

"Because we don't think about future generations, they will never forget us." (Henrik Tikkanen)

"Forget the damned motor car and build the cities for lovers and friends." (Lewis Mumford)Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay

If you are thinking a year ahead, plant seeds. If you are thinking 10 years ahead, plant a tree. If you are thinking 100 years ahead, educate the people.Heroes are not giant statues framed against a red sky. They are people who say: This is my community, and it’s my responsibility to make it better. (Gov. Tom McCall)

Why This Blog?

Jan 19, 2008: LOVESalem reaches the web, bringing a vitally needed message to Oregon's capital city: We must Oregon-ize to put the needs of people before the needs of cars. This requires that we live our environmental values -- that we LOVE (Live Our Values Environmentally) Salem -- by working to stop the Sprawl Machine.

The Sprawl Machine is a ravenous beast that feeds on green space, close-in neighborhoods, and property taxes and that excretes monstrous, ugly road projects that pollute the air, increase mortality and morbidity, promote climate change, weaken families and neighborhoods, and help weaken the social fabric and civic participation.

The Sprawl Machine works by constantly luring its prey with promises that the problems created by cars can be addressed by doing more of the same -- building more lanes, more bridges, consuming ever more money. In other words, the Sprawl Machine promises that we can keep doing the same thing over and over, while expecting a different result this time.

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